Organizers of the Pacific Palisades farmers’ market are shelving their proposed Wednesday-evening market plan after complaints from residents, merchants and farmers.
“We are just really a guest in Pacific Palisades and we want to do what the retailers and the community wants,” Jennifer McColm, founder and chair emeritus of Raw Inspiration, told the Palisadian-Post on Monday. “There were an overwhelming amount of people who did want the market [on Wednesday] but there are also residents passionately against it.”
McColm, who brought the Sunday market to Swarthmore about 14 years ago, said that people are “always afraid of change.” However, some vendors, who felt that a second market day in the Palisades might hurt their own businesses, also opposed the Wednesday-night plan, McColm said. She added that traffic disruption on Sunset (with the 1000 block of Swarthmore closed off) also played a part in their decision.
The market expansion was also opposed by the Pacific Palisades Chamber of Commerce, whose president Nicole Howard told the Post in an e-mail that “While the farmers’ market may be viewed by some as improving the quality of life, it also interferes with the ability of many of our local merchants to conduct business by offering some of the same products our businesses do, limiting street parking (crowding the few lots we do have), as well as inconveniencing many Palisadians by shutting down one of our most frequented streets.”
“While the market has been a valuable addition to our community,” Howard wrote, “an expansion to include Wednesday would do further harm not only to local business owners but our beloved local grocers as well, who contribute to this community in so many positive ways on a daily basis, not only on Sundays. It is for these reasons we continue to support the farmers’ market as is but oppose an additional day.”
A farmers’ market vendor who wished to remain anonymous told the Post on Sunday that the issue is also about reputation. “Most of these vendors that you see here on Sunday have a stellar reputation with [their patrons] and they can’t all be here on Wednesday.”
The vendor said that if Raw Inspiration were to bring in “new farmers on Wednesday,” the newcomers might not only harm the business of farmers on Sunday but also might harm the reputation of the market itself by providing less than “stellar service.”
The Palisades market may be one of the most successful in the Los Angeles area, but its success is tied to the level of service and relationships that “we have been providing and building for years,” the vendor said.
John Edwards, president of Raw Inspiration, told the Post that the goal of a mid-week market was to provide people with more opportunities to buy fresh produce, but in the end it’s all about “what the “community wants.
“Our plans were just exploratory,” he told the Post.
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